Rise (9 page)

Right now, we are about 15 km north of the city, on a back road that leads to a few houses. It’s early evening, and we are cooking hot soup, tea with powdered milk and cubes of sugar, with some canned mandarin oranges for a nice desert. We checked the area earlier, and nothing was moving around here except some deer in the field nearby. If there were undead near, I doubt they’d stay around, so we feel pretty safe. Still, Jess and Michael are playing in the middle of the road, under the watchful eye of Darren (trying not to be involved in the chasing and tickling of Michael, but failing), and Sarah and Dave are talking while walking a circle around us, both armed and ready, just in case. My own guns, the Glock and the carbine, are nearby, and I hardly go anywhere without them. Three or four months ago, before this all began, I was very much anti-gun. The thought of a weapon in the hands of a fifteen year old like Darren would have infuriated me, but now…well, now I think Darren would be a very good man to have at my back. We are all getting to be careful and good shots. Jess makes us practice and learn as much as we can about the guns, and clean them regularly (which reminds me, I need to clean the carbine after this entry). She and I have been spending a fair bit of ‘off time’ together. It’s nothing serious, yet, maybe just two people bonding through a traumatic event, but I like her, and Michael is a good kid. It’s alarming to think he’ll never grow up the way we all did. He’ll never know of a world in which the dead had not come back from the grave. Jess thinks he’s doing alright, and I hope so. I know I’ve been a little twitchy from time to time. We all have, with all the chaos and death and undeath going on.

After dinner we are going to go and clear one of the houses down the road here. We want to do this before dark so we have somewhere reasonably secure to sleep tonight. In the morning, we’ll start looking for radios and start preparing to do something for the people left inside the shopping complex.

The house we approached was a ranch-style with a three car garage. There were three horses running loose in a field nearby, but they took off almost as soon as they saw us, running for the trees. Two cars and a truck were in the driveway, and one of the cars had the front driver’s side door open. We could see an unmoving body in the driver’s seat as we pulled up. The house itself was shut, and all the windows we could see looked intact. We stopped about 50 meters back from the first car, and quietly sat and looked around without getting out. After about ten minutes, we cautiously got out, all but Jess, who stayed with Michael in the van. She turned the van around on the driveway, ready to take off if needed. The rest of us spread out and approached the cars slowly, and we stopped again when we were fifteen feet from the open door to look and listen again. Another several minutes went by, but nobody was impatient. We have all learned that patience and caution are going to keep us alive. That and having Jess around with that sniper rifle of hers.

Dave and Sarah went to the left of the car, and Darren and I to the right. The mess in the car didn’t move at all, and it seemed as though he was truly dead, almost skeletal, with large pieces missing. The body smelled terrible, but it was a smell we were all getting used to, God help us. We approached the house, and Darren hung back with the shotgun while the rest of us stepped up to the front door. I reached out and tried the handle. Locked. I knocked hard several times, and instantly heard groans and thumps from inside. We backed away, and the thumping continued as whatever was inside kept trying to bash the door down from the inside. We went around back, carefully looking into the windows we passed, and found ourselves in a cleared area behind the house. There was a children’s wading pool, a BBQ on a section of paving stones, and several toys and lawn chairs scattered about. I was suddenly glad Michael and Jessica were in the van, and didn’t have to see this. I was afraid we were going to find something terrible inside.

We saw that the back door was unlocked, and the small glass panel was shattered. There was a smeared bloody handprint on the white door, and remnants of blood on the handle. According to our plan, hastily constructed while having dinner earlier, I walked up to the door, keeping the Glock trained on the window. I knocked with my foot, three times. The thumping at the front of the house stopped, and the footsteps approached the back door now. A bloody pair of hands appeared, reaching for me, and I quickly stepped back out of range as a face to go with the arms appeared at the window. The mangled face was that of a woman, possibly mid thirties. She was snarling and grasping at air trying to reach me. Her long black hair was full of bits of paper, blood and dirt, and what looked like dried shampoo. I stepped one step left so I was in line with the door, took aim, and shot her once in the head. She fell back and vanished. I took a few breaths, then moved back as Dave approached, carbine in hand. He knelt down and grabbed the door handle while Sarah and Darren and I covered the area. He pushed the door open and jumped back. Problem was, the corpse of the woman inside was now blocking the doorway. We all waited, and waited. After another ten minutes I went to wave at Jess, the sign that we were going inside. No other zombies had appeared.

Dave and I managed to push the door open, and we went in with guns out. What we found was nasty. Worse than I could have ever imagined only a few months ago, but now it was an all too common thing, I’m sure. We found the kids in the family room, and it was bad. They were very, very truly dead. Darren and Dave both ran outside to throw up. I nearly joined them. The woman was naked, and covered in bites. She must have been in the shower when she was attacked, and Sarah says her wounds were probably fatal within a few minutes. How she managed to kill her attacker I cannot imagine, but we found another corpse with its head caved in just outside the bathroom. There was an iron lying there too, and a whole lot of blood. From the way it looked she must have crawled to the family room, where her kids were, and died there, then reanimated. The carnage we found is what must have happened when she reanimated.

All four of us were in agreement that under no circumstances were we staying here. Jess and Michael were not coming inside. They did not need to see this.

I went back out with Darren to the van, and told Jess when she asked that it was bad, and we weren’t staying. She wanted to go look, but I told her no, and I think the look in my eyes must have convinced her. I stayed with her outside while the others searched the house for whatever we could find. We drained the tanks on the cars, topping up our own to full again. There was a large selection of food in the pantry inside, most of it still good, and out back there was a garden. We got some fresh carrots and a cabbage, but it looked like wildlife had eaten most of the veggies already. In the garage was a case of motor oil, and we made notes to do oil changes on the vehicles ASAP. The others emerged from the house with blankets, a case of beer, a good amount of food (possibly three weeks’ worth if we were careful), some more toiletries, and Darren had grabbed a few CD’s. A few other things like batteries, a flashlight, and some first aid supplies went into the big kit we keep in the van.

We left just as it was starting to get dusky, and stopped on the road a few kilometers away. Today we made plans, sorted our gear out and stored it all properly, and refilled a bunch of water bottles from a stream. Sarah insisted we purify the water, so we boiled it for 10 minutes over a wood fire Dave built (it was smokeless! Damn this guy is handy to have around) and added a drop of bleach to each large bottle before sorting it into the smaller containers we have. I also got to shave, and I feel like a new man now. The scratchy beard is gone, and I think I will not be letting it get so out of hand again. Since we had fresh veggies and a fire, for dinner we added some cabbage to a beef stew, but the carrots we ate raw. We chased it down with some beer we found at the house (yes, even Darren, look at us making a minor a delinquent), some canned peaches, and fresh clear water. After that we all sat around talking about our plans. We hadn’t seen any undead at all today, and were happy to keep it that way.

A plane went over a ways south just a few minutes ago. It was pretty high up, and we could see contrails in the air. I grabbed the binoculars, Jess looked through her scope, and we saw a military jet. It was reflecting sun off its hull, and looked to me like a cargo plane, a big Galaxy or Hercules, maybe. It was traveling west and south, and after some pondering we thought maybe it was coming from CFB Cold Lake, and heading for Vancouver Island. We could be totally off about this, but it was a relief to see that there was still functioning aircraft in the world. And crew to fly them. Good luck to you, whoever you are.

One of the paperbacks I grabbed the other day turned out to be really useful. It’s the Collins Gem edition of the SAS Survival Guide. I have been reading it today while Jess drives the van and Dave drives the Rav4. It’s full of all kinds of useful information, and this could make things easier for us in the long run.

The laptop hard drive got reformatted and reinstalled earlier, and I got rid of all the utilities I no longer need, like all the Norton things, all the Internet stuff and games, and just re-installed Word so I can update this. I reloaded this file from the CD I made the other day, and it worked fine. No other Office programs made the cut.

We cleared another house out earlier today. I am happy to report that there were no undead inhabitants, no dead bodies, and no aliens waiting to abduct us. We managed to secure the place fairly well, and we’ll spend the night here, but we are not staying long. Right now Dave and Sarah and I are taking the Rav4 out to check another house we can see for radios, ammo, or whatever we can find. Darren is staying with Jess and Michael, as much to hold the fort as to help with dinner preparations. Jess found a wood burning stove in the kitchen of this new house, and has promised us a good hot meal of something not soup from a can for once. We’ll be back there in a few hours at most. No sign of any walking dead today, but we are not letting our guard down.

Hot today. The thermometer says it’s 30 degrees Celsius out there. It started foggy and cool, but now the clouds are gone, the faint smell of decay is all over the place, and the sun is burning down out of a clear blue sky. We had a great dinner last night. Jess found some wine to go along with a tuna casserole she made out of canned tuna, pasta, olive oil, and a few vegetables we had left over. None of us got drunk, just a glass each, and water after that, but it was nice to get back to a semblance of normality.

We didn’t find any radios last night while we were out searching, but we did think that maybe we should check some trucks or 18-wheelers for CB’s. It would be easy enough to remove and install them in our own vehicles. We’ll keep an eye out, and I remember seeing at least six trucks in driveways recently, just in this area.

After dinner, Jessica put Michael to sleep on the fold-out couch in the living room here. He sleeps pretty good most nights, but still sometimes wakes up and seeks mom out for comfort. After he was asleep she and I sat in the kitchen in the dark and talked quietly for an hour or so, about our plans, our possible future, and how this could all have happened. When she got up to go to sleep she kissed me on the cheek, and told me thank you. I asked her what for, and she said it was for rescuing her and Michael. She said she had never thanked me, and thought it was about time she did.

Today we are going over plans. Some ideas we rejected right away, like Molotov cocktails. They would involve too much risk of burning the buildings we are trying to rescue people from. Likewise driving in and shooting the place up is out, since the sheer numbers of the dead far outnumber our ammunition. Dave had an idea that has some merit. He suggested that we try going underground. There should be storm sewers that run under the complex that should connect to various points along the river, and we might be able to navigate them. Since the complex is new the amount of debris should be minimal, and the routes there and back clear. We just need to find out the route.

The mall complex was built by Can-Pro Constructs Ltd., and Dave says he knows where the office is in Prince George, as he had them build an extension on his house a few years ago. The sewer prints should be on file there. I looked around here earlier and found a map of the city, and a Yellow Pages book, and looked up Can-Pro. Head office is in the industrial park, so it should be sparsely populated with undead there. With caution we should be able to get in and out completely undetected.

Once we get under the complex it’ll take some work to find the right ladder, but it should bring us up inside the complex someplace, hopefully somewhere clear of undead. Then we can contact the survivors, if any, and get them out of there. We need a fallback position, somewhere to run to once we leave. We’ll have to think carefully about that, and see what the maps tell us. The more we talk about it the more we think this can be done.

Three more planes went over earlier. We were all sitting around having tea, and pasta with Alfredo sauce (powdered milk was the base, and Jess found a package of Alfredo mix in the house’s pantry), when Michael looked outside and asked why there were arrows in the sky. We all asked “huh?” quite intelligently, and then Darren looked outside and said there were three planes leaving contrails. We all rushed out, and this time it was Sarah who grabbed the binoculars. We all took turns looking at the three parallel contrails as they passed southwest, and when it was my turn I could make out a large jet, another Galaxy, I suspected, and two fighter escorts. It looked like a pair of CF-18’s. We all watched them silently pass beyond the horizon, then trooped back inside. They had been holding approximately the same course as the Galaxy we had seen on the 21st, and going the same direction at the same time. We had no idea what it meant. Was there a base somewhere still operating? Were these planes coming or going? Did they make return flights to and from the airports, or were they fleeing a base that was overrun? We speculated for hours after it got dark, and now we are all too tired to stay up any longer, except for me, since I drew watch. Sarah will relieve me in a few hours.